Preparation

Line a large baking sheet with wax paper.

Peel bananas and carefully insert a popsicle stick into bottom end of each banana, halfway up stick. Arrange bananas on the baking sheet and freeze until firm but not frozen hard, about 1 hour. (You don't want the bananas so cold that the chocolate solidifies before you have a chance to add the peanut brittle.)

Make Peanut Brittle While Bananas Are Freezing:

Butter a rimmed baking sheet. Combine peanuts, sugar, corn syrup, and salt in a 2 1/2- to 3-quart heavy saucepan, and bring slowly to a boil over medium heat, stirring.

Position a candy thermometer so that it can rest on side of pan with bulb in mixture. Slowly boil, without stirring but tilting and swirling mixture in pan if it begins to color unevenly. Cook until deep golden and temperature reaches 295°F on thermometer, about 5 minutes.

Melt chocolate in a deep metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water, stirring occasionally, until smooth. Remove bowl of chocolate from pan. Working with 1 banana at a time, set banana in bowl and coat most of banana evenly in chocolate by spooning it on and smoothing it with the back of the spoon.

Immediately sprinkle peanut brittle over chocolate coating while chocolate is still wet, then return coated banana to wax paper-lined sheet, and let it set while coating remaining bananas. Refreeze bananas, if necessary, to firm up chocolate.

Cooks' note:
Bananas can be coated and kept frozen on prepared sheet, covered with plastic wrap after chocolate sets, 3 days ahead.

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I did not make this recipe but wanted to make a comment on the bananas. When I make English Toffee it leaves an enourmous amount of crumbs behind so I usually also make chocolate covered bananas rolled in the crumbs - similar method assembly to this recipe. I always use Nestle Semi Sweet chips over a double boiler - once the water simmers, it only needs to be kept warm. And the water does not touch the bottom of the pan with the chocolate or else it will clump and turn the chocolate gritty. Also milk chocolate chips will not work - only clump when "melted". As long as the bananas are not turning spotted they should be firm enough to stick onto a skewer. Also agree that too big of a banana should be cut into half for ease of using a skewer. I use the bamboo skewers like you'd use for a bbq. I don't freeze my bananas until after they are coated in chocolate and rolled into nuts and in this case the toffee. I've never been able to temper chocolate without a machine, but find that the cheaper Nestle chips work okay when I am coating with nuts, etc.

BlushingTomato from Campbell, CA / 06.26.14

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The peanut brittle is delicious and seriously easy. I used blanched salted peanuts and omitted the additional salt called for, and it turned out great - the peanuts roast quite a bit in the hot syrup, so I'm not sure dry-roasted peanuts, as called for, are necessary. The candy also didn't foam up nearly as much as the recipe would have you believe (although this may be a reflection on the freshness of my baking soda), so you could probably make due with just a 2-quart pan.
But do not bother with chocolate-coating the bananas unless you are experienced with chocolate and using a very high-quality product with a high cocoa butter content. I cheaped out on store-brand chocolate chips, and it turned into an awful, chunky mess even though I followed my pastry-chef sister's instructions for tempering chocolate perfectly - I was able to neither fully coat the bananas nor adhere the brittle. Since the frozen bananas make the chocolate seize up, and whole fresh bananas are difficult to handle without breaking, I would recommend cutting the bananas in half cross-wise (a whole banana is quite a large serving size anyway) and dipping before freezing.